The Bible speaks of the importance of being thankful and practicing gratitude, intentional gratitude, being grateful. Why is it so important? Well, not only is it medicine, but it's kind of an armament to protect us, or at least us, to help fight sin, right? The nature of sin is selfishness. It is, we are the most important individual, and we lose sight of God and everything else. And we engage in behaviors that are destructive to ourselves and to everyone else. And so, gratitude, thankfulness, is a way of thinking of something other than yourself. It's about thinking of God. It's about thinking of those around you that God has placed. It also serves as a way to create a standard to deal with the disappointments, or the things that you don't have. It is a way of ultimately creating God's character in you. It is a tool that God gives us to fight sin, and to help us keep our eyes focused on Jesus.
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To enter the gates of the Lord is really in the morning when we get up and we pray and we speak to the Lord, we're entering into his gates. Would you agree? When we leave our home and we go out into the mission field, God travels with us. And so we're in his presence. Of course, when we're in church. And so when we come into the presence of the Lord, whether it's at home, whether it's at work, whether it's a church, our attitude should be one of joy, of gladness. There should be a positive expectation. And it doesn't mean that we can't have bad days or disappointments or concerns or any of those things. But I think David is saying this is a standard we should have in our lives as Christians, that there should be a joy, a gladness, a positive expectation in our lives that God is with us. And that God will guide us. And thanksgiving is a part of that. Gratefulness is a very strong part of that.
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When we get up every day and we are intentionally grateful, we're intentionally thankful. Thank you, Lord, for the things that's in my life. I mean, this is a mental exercise. This is not something you just create an arbitrary list and you just recite it without actually thinking about it. To be thankful is actually to kind of think through the things that you have in your life. You're thankful for God. You're thankful for the people in your life. You're thankful for the positions that you're in. You're itemizing all the positive benefits that are in your life. And sin causes us to think about ourselves. To focus on ourselves. But gratefulness, number one, creates an awareness of ourselves to see God and his generosity.
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So the very aspect of coming in to worship on the Sabbath, we are recognizing this isn't just about us. This isn't just about a club. This isn't about my particular decision that one day works out more convenient than the other. As many of you know, keeping the Sabbath can be inconvenient when it comes to the world and what they want you to do. And so you are doing it because of your recognition of someone outside of yourself, God, who created you, who gave you life. When you wake up in the morning and you breathe, that's because of God. But we know that sin came in, but God didn't abandon us. He sent his son to die for our sins so that we would not be left in our own sins. We would not be destroyed because the penalty of sin is death. He made this incredible sacrifice, took the weight of mankind, upon him and hung on the cross and died for our sins so that we could have forgiveness. We could have cleansing. We could have eternal life. And we also have the hope of his return when he will put all of death and suffering and sin to an end and the new heaven, the new earth, life will go on without any blemish of the past. Can we not be thankful for that?
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Each day when we come before the Lord and we say thank you, Lord, for all of these various things, we're remembering the life he's given us. We're remembering the recreated life he's given us through Jesus Christ. We remember the coming day and we're thankful for all of that. And that gives us perspective in all things. Not only does it create an awareness outside of ourself to see God and his generosity because every blessing that comes to us is from God, but it also creates an awareness outside of ourself to see others in our life and be thankful for them as well.
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Intentional gratitude, waking up every day is, is being thankful for all of the things that God bestows upon you, all the blessings. It's also being thankful for all the people that God has put in your life. And to express that thankfulness as well.
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At the end of the day, none of us get through this life without help from others along the way. Now, it's what you do with those opportunities, granted, but at the same time, the devil wants us to focus only on ourselves, but God wants us to see the reality. He is there guiding us and so are the people in our lives. And being intentionally grateful each and every day sets the stage for us to deal with the more difficult things, the things that we don't have.
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Being grateful and thankful creates a standard through which we can properly filter the things we don't have, the disappointments. When you wake up in the morning and you are thankful to God for all of the blessings and for all of the people and all of the things, well, there's issues that...You do need to look at. There are things that you don't have. And some of those things are things you need. Some of those things are things you actually don't need but you want.
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There are things that maybe God withholds from us because they would be detrimental to us, and we just don't know it. We don't have the perspective on that. But that's where trust comes in. Now, for the things that are worth getting and pursuing, God will give us the tools to do those things. He will provide the resources. He will give us the ideas or the opportunities, right? That's, again, going to Him. It's also recognizing you're not the only one in this. God is there to help you.
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When you're not grateful, you don't wake up every day recognizing that God is there for you. You're thankful for what He's done and thankful for those in your life. And you think it's just about you. And you don't focus on the blessings you have. You can't even see the blessings. You ever met somebody like that? They can only see the negative things in their life. That's all they focus on. It's like, remember the Charlie Brown cartoon, and there was the kid that never showered? Pigpen, they called him. And in the cartoon, they had this kind of cloud around him at all times, right? And it was to represent the odor of stink because he never cleaned. Well, it's like when you are constantly in a state of negativity, always thinking about what you don't have and what you deserve, et cetera, it's almost it creates like a mental, emotional cloud, right, of negativity, and it chases people away as much as a cloud of stink. It stinks in that sense.
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Being thankful and grateful gives you perspective, okay, let's look at the things that I need that I don't have. Lord, help me. But if we negate that and we're focused on the negative, we can become negative. We can become entitled. We can start to become destructive to other people. We infuse that negativity on other people, and we're not processing it in a proper way. God knows we have things that we need. But at the same time, we have to process them through this thankfulness, this gratitude. Be patient. God will guide us and lead us.
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It creates an awareness of what we control and what we don't, and what God can turn into blessings. One of the biggest challenges that people face, and it's a simple counseling technique, is when you're looking at problems and things that need to be done, what do you have control over and what do you not? Because a lot of people waste time on things they can't control, and they will obsess over it, and they will worry about it, and they will spend countless hours wasting thought energy about it. But you can't change it. You can't do anything. There are things you can change. Those are the things you need to put energy towards. You need to turn to God in prayer. Help me to find these resources. But there are things that are out of your control. And once you can sit down and say, Lord, this is out of my control, if change is going to happen, I trust you. But I'm not going to worry about
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I realize that everything is done in God's will. And so that helps me to process the things I don't have, but to remember the blessings that God gives in my life, to realize what I can control and what I can think on and focus and turn to the Lord in prayer and what I can't.
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When you practice that every day, repeatedly, you start to develop a character that's reflective of that, a character that's reflective of God. you know people who are thankful and are grateful, they're easy to be around. People who are full of negativity and all consumed with the things they don't have, they're very difficult to be around. You want to help them. But I've discovered sometimes those people want to swim in that negativity. They don't want that cloud to disappear for one reason or another. And that really affects them in a negative way. Again, it doesn't mean that there aren't challenges and there aren't down days and so forth. But at the same time, we're told in Scripture to have the mind of Christ. As David tells us, he gives us the strength. We show up with gladness, with expectation, with thankfulness, and God armors us. He gives us the medicine to combat sin and selfishness.
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It was almost like, if anything, it was a positive rebuke. If you weren't acknowledging the great blessings in your life, you're like, how can I be so ungrateful when this person is so full of thankfulness and gratefulness, right? And that's what I think David is talking about. When we enter the gates of the Lord, when we enter into that space, nothing is impossible. I can do all things through Christ Jesus which strengthens me. But it begins with taking an inventory of our lives, of the blessings in our lives, and being thankful, recognizing God's movement, recognizing the people in our lives. And as we do that day in and day out, it forms God's character in us. People see God in us and they want more of Him, right? And by associating that with God's character in us, they want more of Him, right? They want more of God. They want to be part of His character, and they want to be a part of His character. That's what the church is supposed to be, all of us following God, reflecting His character, and people see that and want to be a part of that, to realize that there is something better than what they have.
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We look to Daniel as this man who suffered so much loss. So many things that he could have been bitter and angry about. Yet Daniel was a man of God who was thankful for God's presence, who looked to him, a great man of faith. I think he was thankful for the people in his life. He was able to process the loss that he experienced through his thankfulness and his gratitude and his faith in God. And the people were able to see God in him, which is why he was elevated to these positions.
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It's through the character of God that people learn of his truth, learn of him and want to be a part of his kingdom. God gives us gratefulness and thankfulness as a spiritual medicine to fight sin, to be the people he wants us to be. This is our message, the spiritual medicine of gratefulness.
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